Thursday, July 29, 2010

Hey Fans, The Players Love You Guys!

It is the doldrums of summer in terms of hockey. The rush of free agency is over, most prospect camps are over and teams don't start any sort of activities until September. July and August are always the slowest in terms of hockey news. In the meantime, I wanted to throw out a few quotes that I got from players regarding you guys, the fans. The players have so many positive things to say about the fans in Austin, and I thought I'd share some of that in their words:

Left wing Luke Gazdic:

"The fans have been unbelievable. Once you got them there, once they came to a game, they couldn't leave. It was unbelievable to see by the end of the season, the Calder Cup Finals, 7,000 fans in the middle of June in Central Texas, waving their rally towels and probably louder than most arenas in the league. It was just unbelievable."

"And if they've taken a liking to my style of play that's also nice to see. You see a lot of Gazdic jerseys and t-shirts out there and it's definitely nice when someone's showing you support and I'm glad I have some fans out there."

Right wing Colton Sceviour:

"[The atmosphere] was unbelievable. We got fans throughout the whole season, 4 or 5 thousand fans, which is really good, even the odd 6 or 7,000 fans for some games. But then during the playoffs, those last two rounds, you've got 7,000 fans every single night. When we were on the road during the [regular] season, they'd do occasional watch parties, but when you're at home and you can't get enough fans in the stands that you have to throw a watch party at home and people show up for that, that shows that we took that area by storm. They weren't expected that or didn't know what was coming."

"A lot of people who had never watched hockey came in, saw a couple games and loved it. We even had fans throughout the season that would saw that they came to one game or two through the season and now they have season tickets. I think that's what it's all about, getting fans through the door and giving them something they can enjoy. Hopefully we can keep getting fans next year."